#sometimes gay people and the gay art they make is messy and imperfect

[itsmesheep]

*beating you with hammers* SOMETIMES 🔨 THINGS 🔨 THAT 🔨 ARE 🔨 HOMOEROTIC 🔨 ARE 🔨 INTENTIONAL 🔨🔨🔨

[trials-of-a-spirit-worker]

We Need to Talk about Encanto (rant)

First off, I loved this movie. The music slaps, the story is beautiful, the art--holy shit. But I’ve been noticing unfortunately, some really huge misunderstandings between people’s views of characters on the movie or how its portrayed. I’ve seen a lot of the Latinx/Hispanic community rightfully voicing their issues with people hijacking this movie’s meaning. I’m not part of the Latinx/Hispanic community, but I’m more than willing to echo these complaints and concerns because it needs to be said.

Overall, Encanto is a character based story. It is a generational trauma story. A bunch of people saw themselves in different characters and are using the characters to express their own family issues online and that's absolutely great. And that transcends backgrounds easily which only adds to how good a movie this is. 

But mostly, I’ve been hearing issues with the queer community (specifically white queer people) framing the healing and growth as “coming out” and that’s been seen to overshadow the more intended meaning. Isabella’s differently colored dress is one of the biggest arguing points I’ve seen like “oh she was secretly gay the whole time and that's why she didn’t want to marry the suave guy (I totally blanked on his name)”was her authenticity coming through not...queerness. Anyone who was the golden child knows about the authenticity issue. She didn’t want to marry the man because she didn’t like the man like that. And it’s not really far-fetched to say Isa might’ve known how Dolores felt about him and didn’t want to do that to her cousin. It was very clear Abuela and dude’s mom was the one setting the two of them up, they were “perfect” it made sense. Isa probably felt like her hands were tied because she had to keep up a facade of perfection because it pleased Abuela. 

And I’m saying this as a queer/gay person myself; not everything rainbow is specifically gay! Isa’s colors were messy because she had to learn how to be herself and sometimes being yourself is not pretty or organized. She’s learning rawness, hence the mess of colors. Beautiful in its own way but not conventionally pretty. Also, do you really want to associate imperfection with gay? I thought we as a whole were trying to move past that. Because I swear the same people who are stomping up and down about this being gay and that being gay, would break down if yet another fuckng movie protrayed being gay as being imperfect or bad. 

Another thing I’ve seen along with the Latinx/Hispanic community is a lot of sexualization of characters in the movie which...stop. That community has more than enough issues with fetishization. Do not tack on more. Camillo is 15. And I state that cause it seems like he gets the worst of it. He’s a child. Enough. Bruno is at least an adult. And cool, people simp over Bruno a bit, whatever. I’ve seen some cute him and reader fics and shit. People simp over Luisa and she’s a young adult. Big strong lady attracts the wlw community, I get it. Attraction is one thing and that’s fine, but I’ve seen some fetishizing shit and no matter how “good” your intentions are, fetishizing is dehumanization at its core. And none of it is subtle. 

I’d speak more on Abuela and the skewed view she’s been given but...I haven’t seen enough of that to properly go on about it. I just want to say this is a villainless movie. Abuela has done wrong, yes, but she also makes steps to atone for that and a lot of it is her own unaddressed trauma. Is it an excuse to how she was acting? No. But that’s like...the point...of the movie!!?! It’s gonna start and end with her because Mirabel is the one who opens that opportunity to get everything aired out, she’s getting the family to start over. That includes Abuela. Which is nice in my opinion because it shows you’re never too late/too old to start making changes too. 

And I’d encourage the Latinx/Hispanic community to correct me if I’m wrong about things here, cause at the end of the day, this is your movie, your representation. You should feel inclined to speak on it and your grievances are more than valid. I truly do hope it does spark more chances for more Latinx/Hispanic based movies. 

---

TLDR: People need to stop oversexualizing characters, especially Camillo, leave Abuela alone, not everything rainbow is gay or a coming out take and most importantly, listen to the Latinx/Hispanic community about discourse like this on Encanto. Listen to the people a movie reps, ffs.

Also yes, a lot of the issues  I’ve seen were on tiktok but it still needs addressing.

[ayellowcurtain]

Would you mind giving a description of the type of character sander is pls? I can't get a handle on him. At times he was inconsistent in s3(this is partially bc of the writing and partially) bc he was trying to conceal parts of himself from Robbe and exaggerating his personality to impress Robbe. The source material was a huge crutch in parts of this storytelling, then sobbe lost some spark in parts of wtfockdown, fanon help fill the empty spaces and now the transmedia is evolving him too. Help?

I’m gonna try to help you, anon but I guess what I’m gonna say is basically my opinion and so it might differ from what’s canon or what other people think of him and also gonna link you to some prior posts I already made talking a little bit of him: 

- Sander’s similarities with Eliott about how sometimes they struggle to deal with emotions 

- Sander and his parents, his home life and his relationship with them 

- Why was Sander going back and forth with Britt 

Now onto your real answer: 

I think Sander, as a character, is a solid one. He as a human being in some universe is imperfect, has his flaws and maybe his bad judgment at times, of situations and of people. 

Is not because he’s a fictional character that he needs to be perfect, to always say and do the right thing. 

If WTFock did him (and Robbe) dirty was mainly because of their complete lack of understanding of what pacing is. I don’t think season 3 was that badly written. It does has some horrible pacing at times, yes (OHN being on a Monday can only be a joke!!!!). 

I don’t think he was purposefully exaggerating his personality. I’m sure the Sander we now know isn’t exactly as loud and out there as we saw during the supermarket clip, for example. But he was freaking out, and being obnoxious without meaning to.

To me, it felt like was mostly freaking out, not sure what to do with himself because the boy he saw once during a random night was there, all alone with him, accepting to go out to go grocery shopping. 

That’s just an example but it’s the same behavior I see when he says they won after he shot Britt during the paintball scene, when he sings Bowie to Robbe while they see the girls walking away after the Noor x Robbe fight, or when he goes to Robbe’s place the next day and tries to kiss him. All this moments, to me, feel like a boy that doesn’t know what to do with himself, how to behave when he’s around someone he’s falling so deeply and hard for. 

We often see the Evens as these cool creatures, confident, sweet, chill. But we have to remember that’s just the first impression (and from their Isaks’ POV), and after they get to know each other, the Evens are often shy, insecure, kind of lone wolves to some degree. 

So what I thought could be seen as “inconsistent” of Sander was just him probably freaking out he was spending time with Robbe, the boy that the moon was shining on him and that Sander knew was the one. 

That’s why I assume putting “original” characters after two seasons feels a little bit like crutches (with their background stories) because if you think about it, we always know most of the characters in Skam since season 1, so even when they’re not main characters, we got to know them in the background at least, to get some information throughout the other seasons. 

We feel more connected to Robbe (and every Isak), and his background story because we’ve been hearing about it for two seasons. 

We know he has a messy house situation, we know his relationship with Jens is kinda platonic but also very brother like (with slaps, saying rude things to each other, etc), we know some people think he’s gay, we know he’s a caring friend because of the way he was with Jana during her season. All this information we got before his season. So when he was main, there was no need to build background around him because we already had most of these informations before. 

Sander is a complete stranger to us. And WTFock even gave us two episodes of just Robbe, to get to know him even more but also leaving less time for us to connect with Sander. So what we got of him was mostly WITH Robbe and ABOUT his feelings for Robbe. We know where he studies because Noor told this in ONE line.

The fandom often falls deeply in love with Even because of what we see through their lovers eyes and for how soft, caring, and representative he is (with being bipolar and pan) but I feel like we get more of who he is and his background in Sana’s season. We learn more about his past, his friends, his MI, his beliefs or curiosity about faith, etc. 

Even if we barely see him with the balloon squad, watching them we see the type of people Even (or Sander) would like to be surrounded with. 

I know people are not the biggest fans of Sobbe during WTFockdown, but I said this before, and I’ll say it again: I think I love them even more after. Even the cybersex part because I thought it was cute, the way Sander was saying he shouldn’t have pushed Robbe into doing it the past week, or how they look at each other and the things they say and how clearly they’re still trying to find the middle ground both of them are willing to experiment with. 

Anyway, I thought it was cute, and I thought it was necessary, with the conversations about the attack (WTFock made a horrible writing decision not letting this happen during the season, but at least they gave us something), about Robbe’s traumas that are still very much alive, about his mom and how well she’s doing most of the time, how Robbe is still trying to help her in any way he can. And also about boundaries, about Robbe, that same boy that was calling Sander the F word is now so out and proud, asking Milan about cybersex, talking to his friends about it (because he did tell the boys what they did or Aaron wouldn’t be trying to have cybersex with Amber and the boys wouldn’t be taking their clothes off for Sander’s bday). 

I think WTFock would use Sobbe for as much content as they can because they know that’s their golden couple. The Willems have a unique chemistry that’s out of this world, they’re both amazing actors and WTFock knows they’re solid, that the fandom will watch, engage in whatever these characters are involved in and that they boys will deliver every time, no matter how odd the circumstances are. The WTFock team knows they can give these boys a few lines and let they create a scene out of it and it’ll still be good content.  

After this long ass post I’ll have to tell you that Sander is:

Mostly private, reserved, some would say shy but I think he just saves himself the energy and the trouble so he only really engages with who he really wants. In this case, Robbe, and the people that are important to Robbe because, again, Robbe is the most important person. I really think (and hope) that when Sander keeps saying “it’s you and me, always”, he really means it. Like they’re one, a solid team that works so well together to tackle any and everything. 

A natural flirt. I mean, look at him, you know? And he doesn’t even have to try. And when he tries, it’s over for anyone else because he’ll be eating a marshmallow in that way he did with Britt, he’ll be kissing his girl like he wishes he could be kissing Robbe, he’ll be licking your ear, and dragging you out of a bar, purring please say at yours like no fucking other. 

He’s a full on artist. He loves any type of art, he loves talking about art, he loves doing art, painting, drawing, taking pictures, listening to music, thinking about all the intense colors. I’m sure he’s a very visual person in his brain too. If you ask him about how he’s feeling, it’ll be probably easier to draw what he fells than write. 

Again, nobody likes talking about this but Sander is a horny one. And he knows how to tease with the stepping back before Robbe can kiss him, he knows what to say, how to look at you with those shiny lips, wetting his lips with his tongue all the time, asking to have cybersex. And I’m also sure he’s really good at sex and enjoys it so very much. 

When you’re not Robbe, and when you’re not involved with Robbe, when Robbe doesn’t care about you, Sander can be hard like a brick. He’ll scream at you with no shame if you get under his skin because he really doesn’t care. He’s finally fully happy, with the guy he thinks is the one and he doesn’t want to spend a second of his energy with you so he won’t even try. 

I think he has a really small filter from what he thinks and what he says. Like when he says Robbe can bribe the teacher, or when firts with Robbe while Britt is taking a shower, or when he says they need to put some better music instead of making out with his boyfriend during the last episode. 

His “all the way or no way” line is basically words he lives by and he’s also a taurus, like myself, so he really means those words with any aspect of his life. 

He forgave Robbe so easily after the F word scene because 1) he’s a teenagers, he won’t be thinking as hard as the fandom did about it 2) again, it’s Robbe and he can get away with anything because Sander is completely gone for this boy that he won’t be able to stay mad even when he knows he should because he wants to be with Robbe, that’s it.

He and Robbe are very close, not only as boyfriends, I feel like right now, after everything that happened between Robbe and the boys and Sander with Britt (and probably the ballon squad) they’re very picky with trying to start new relationships, and they know they’re solid with each other, they have similar taste and opinions. Robbe softens Sander’s edges a little bit and Sander makes Robbe a little more confident in being himself, picking himself first. 

I hope this very long, ridiculous answer helps you a little bit, anon, don’t mind me getting carried away talking about characters I love :’D

[saint-vagrant]

(xposted from insta) for TDOV i wanted to compile some of the art i've made since finishing my initial LOVE LETTERS collection from last year, if just for me to reflect on.

a lot of what i make is specific to experiences known/heard/shared, and to stories i have written/will write, making up for a time when all i heard was that gay romance was played out (??) that trans people must not be depicted as sexual/kinky or else it sets back our humanity (??) and that no one would take me seriously were i to pursue it-- never mind how utterly unfathomable it was that i could be trans-- or trans And gay. And fat. And ill. And too poor to afford surgery-- And too emotionally attached to the mental map i’m familiar with to be wholly comfortable with it anyway. and the rules go on and on and on. it's now about 12 years since i came out publicly, and i think for the foreseeable future i'll be trying to satisfy all the time lost. this work is personal, but it's also public-- it's something i want people to see, regardless of their own immediate connection to it. it's based in life and in fiction. it's physical and sexual-- feeling like a flesh and blood person (rather than detached and ghostly) is hard, and the power/politics/history of who is ALLOWED to be a person and ALLOWED to be sexual (on their own terms, with their unlearned and reworked rules) is pretty fraught.  so like... my work is for the public, in that it’s public, responding to ongoing conversation. and it's for myself. it conflicts and contradicts. it isn't soft or sweet, to me, because i've never been soft or sweet-- i've rarely been treated as soft or sweet in a way that didn't feel like a physical defanging, to insist i become soft and sweet, to be good, to make up for my unfortunate flaws. there's some work that'll never see the light of the day, or must be shared with people who feel/need as i do or speak a similar unconscious language, because the purpose/form of therapy it takes is a private one. and since being a person means being made of/having some relationship to memory, i draw/write things from the past and the present and all the messy mistakes or confusing moments or ugliness therein, when language is imperfect, when people don’t know themselves, where “heroes”/“villains” are much easier to cling to than reality. but my work isn’t for... who it isn’t for. people who appear similar/have many overlaps can be hit with competing needs that require compassion-- often culminating in separate resources/spaces/content. it’s hard. but it’s okay.

it’s a process. it's somewhat intentionally separate from my comic work (which is also a whole mess of intertwined ideas and challenging emotions, equally fulfilling, though shown through different imagery.) each part is itself a step toward something, or filling in behind, sometimes obsessively backtracking, trying to tie myself to myself. anyway, i draw bare-chested fat nasty boys because it's genuinely unconscionable and incomprehensible for me not do so.

[sheparrrds]

listen i rly don’t think blizzard cares

like. they’re not a studio that makes character driven stories. they wanted to make a new multiplayer fps, and i reckon they probably also wanted to tap into the rpg single player audience, the people that play story&character based video games.

so they dangled a few bits of detail, made out like overwatch was this interesting new concept - an fps with Lore, with worldbuilding, with media outside the game - and drew in the sorts of players that appealed to. the sorts of players who probably don’t often play mp online games.

they said there’d be diversity, representation, lgbt+ heroes, racially and ethnically diverse heroes. they said there was a story behind it all they had to tell, and implied that it wouldn’t just be another western white straight male game.

it’s been.. nearly two years.

the ‘lore’ is scattered, gap-filled, in some places non-existent. there is no cohesive timeline, and conflicts all over the place with regards when events happened, how old characters are, the timeline of the universe they created. there have been various retcons, mistakes in official art. there’s no structure, no context, and when ‘lore’ is released, it’s often scraps of information with no relevance to the many many questions and gaps in the rest of the story and character backgrounds. sometimes there’s something apparently crucial in there too, like when moira was released and suddenly had everything to do with gabriel’s ‘reaperisation’, but none of it ever gets explained or developed any further or fit into the rest of the ‘lore’ puzzle. we beg for scraps, and have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

there’s one confirmed lgbt hero. and apart from the ‘announcement’ and christmas comic, there’s been absolutely nothing since then, in game or otherwise, for that to have any meaning. it feels a bit like jkr and her infamous “oh btw dumbledore’s gay”. a ploy for diversity brownie points, rather than any relevant representation. where are the other lgbt+ heroes? tracer’s sexuality is still treated as a fetish by a lot of the male fanbase, and is ignored by the game’s media so much that it may as well never have happened. why does blizzard exacerbate this with their silence and conspicuous lack of any real meaningful attempt at the representation they promised?

the same can be said for racial and ethnic representation. other voices are much more important than mine in that issue, but there’s been so much discussion about blizzard’s attempt at a racially diverse cast, not to mention the accusations of cultural appropriation, misuse, mistakes, whitewashing, a blatant lack of research and consultation from the cultures they try to present. where is the representation they, again, promised? is it truly positive, respectful, benefit-of-the-doubt representation?

i don’t. think they care. i really don’t.

their game isn’t for us. idk if it ever was. it’s a game with a real problem of hateful and toxic players (which is another thing blizzard do not seem to care about at all) and secondly, a typical demographic of young white cis men whose game of choice is always the fps. it’s unedeniable that changes in recent times have been unfairly biased towards those who play dps characters, that the game is still incredibly unbalanced, that adding new heroes to an already imperfect roster is just.. getting tiring. yet blizz still do it, because their target audience don’t care about characters, or diversity, or representation. they don’t care about ‘lore’. those things aren’t prerequisites to blizz making money.

and that’s what overwatch was always meant to be. i don’t think there’s a plan, a cohesive story, a Something that will make sense of the messy disjointed universe they keep throwing us scraps from. and tbh, if there is a plan, i don’t think it’s going to be a satisfactory one.

i love these characters, and this universe, and that’s why i started playing the game, knowing full well the game wasn’t About the characters or universe. but it’s frustrating when nothing makes sense, everything has holes, there’s so many unanswered questions with no hope of resolution. i’m just tired. and tbh i love what i’ve come to believe in as My canon, more than anything blizz could show me as theirs.

[trickstarbrave]

i hate any discussions of morality in fiction because i am in the camp that you can have morally grey, imperfect, or even evil characters. you’re allowed to have characters who do bad things and explore it. you’re allowed to have unhealthy relationship dynamics. you’re allowed to have even good characters do bad things. people aren’t perfect. people make mistakes. people love horrible people. people do horrible things. and sometimes people are just bad people, living their lives, doing bad things, and won’t ever really see justice for it. i like stories with complicated morality, with messy questions, with problems where there is no easy solution. i like situations where there is not really a good outcome, and even if people love each other that isn’t enough to solve their problems or even really be together. i like watching people, through love, do absolutely horrible acts as a form of catharsis. i do think there is plenty of room to explore all the messy, bad realities we live through in fiction without actively condoning it.

but also even if it is fiction and a safe place to explore things there are lines in the sand and seemingly innocuous things set me off because i can never tell if the person saying it has crossed that line. its like someone talking about how much they like dark humor. i mean i like some dark humor, it helps me cope with genuinely awful things i’ve been through in my life, but a lot of the people very vocal about liking dark humor are the kinds of people who just like to make bigoted jokes and then claim its supposed to make you uncomfortable so get over it and stop critiquing them.

dark subject matter needs a level of care with it and no not everyone is gonna write it perfectly. you’ll make mistakes. sometimes choices you make that arent that hurtful harm someone else reading it while others are totally fine. but also sometimes you just tell these kinds of stories the wrong way. “you don’t need me to tell you what is right and wrong lol what are you some kind of child???” it’s not really like that. i don’t need you to hold my hand and go “see this abusive man is in the Wrong. he’s a Bad Guy. Very Bad Man. he gets Bad Things that happen to him. also look both ways b4 you cross the street and don’t talk to strangers!!! wear ur seatbelt!!! do you understand???” instead things like abuse in fiction are more along with the analogy of rape jokes. very obviously most of the people hearing it and potentially the person making it will all go “yeah OBVIOUSLY rape is bad but its a funny joke!! dark humor!!” and they laugh. and unknown to them a rapist in the group finds solidarity with them, knows they don’t take it that seriously, and if they frame it right will be ready to defend them. and the rape victim who has been blamed for their own abuse learns that if they talk about it they will just get laughed at. 

the person making this jokes never intends for that. the person making the joke was simply raised in a culture where these kinds of jokes are fine to make. this person was never taught those kinds of far reaching effects. the people laughing, when you explain it to them, feel angry you’re insinuating they would do that knowingly, and why are you trying to blame them for the thoughts and feelings of a rapist? these people haven’t give much thought about how these jokes play into a larger culture where victims are taken less seriously, are blamed for their own abuse, and are shamed from coming forward. ultimately the joke is just one part of a larger cog, it isn’t directly responsible for rape but is a reflection of an already existing problem and in it’s existence reinforces that status quo. 

when you make stories about abuse you have to think about the implications. stories and art do not exist in a vacuum. and ultimately everything we make will not be perfectly ideologically pure because we’re sponges soaking in all of the cultural information around us and some of that will be bad, but that doesn’t mean some things aren’t more harmful than others. your stories and art will rarely be the direct cause of further abuse but play a part in it. it is based on the culture you are currently living in where victims are not taken seriously. it will be read by people in that culture. it will reinforce those ideas. abusers will read it and think you condone their actions. victims will read it and think they either deserved it or it wasn’t a big deal or that no one will ultimately take what they went through seriously if it isn’t sexy and palatable for them.

you can write shitty things without being a shitty person but if we can all agree bury your gays and racist stereotypes are harmful and that there are better ways to handle this we can agree you can write about abuse and difficult subjects better without compromising the grey lens and beating your audience over the head abt how its bad. you also need to question ideas you were raised with and sort them out. what every single character in your story does may not be a direct reflection of your personal values but how it is framed usually is.